u/michaelnovatireplied·DELETED · archived copy★ FEATURED
I used deep research and deep research sources some reddit threads but I feel like "serious allegations of unethical practices" is a bit extreme, the content was:
1. discussing outcomes
2. discussing resume practices and applying for jobs for people
I'll update the screenshot - I honestly only looked at the IK column and didn't read the others, including Formation hahaha, I'll give it a look and update in a few mins
This has been up for a while but I feel like Outco is dead anyways. Like I think the founders moved on to something else. A number of people have been sued by them (and threatened to be sued) for not paying them after they thought they were eligible for the job guarantee refund and the collectors they talked to didn't seem that organized.
Pathrise also shut down.
I have a business principle that you ruthlessly have to focus on delivering value to people for what they are paying you or you shouldn't exist.
More bootcamps, interview prep programs, immersive, mentorship communities should follow this advice because far too many offer like a $50 Udemy course, add on recent alumni as mentors/teachers, add on intangible benefits like 'community' and charge $20,000.
You might get by if people get really good jobs and credit the intangibles.
But if you aren't trying to deliver value and are…
Yeah it's very small but they have a few mentors who did Coachable earlier on, legit mentors yeah.
Formation is less 1-1 on demand and we don't have 1-1 on demand technical mentorship. You have 4 dedicated non-technical support members on our team, and you do 1-1 mocks, office hours, but most sessions are 3 to 6 person small group sessions.
Interview Kickstart has even larger group sessions and then has some 1-1 thrown in there.
All very different.
Yeah Formation is costly if you are in Canada, so that makes sense and I think it could be an option but it's not a slam dunk if you are very FE oriented (because I think our SD prep is very strong and it's less relevant for FE). You could try it on the 1 week free trial and see but I would only consider if you are focused on the FAANG-level.
Hi, I'm the founder of Formation and Coachable is a competitor so I want to disclose that bias but I'm trying to answer without considering that.
So first off, Launch School you have to do Core first - which is meant for people starting out generally - and THEN you do Capstone.
It's more of a bootcamp model + a long rampup period.
If you feel like your FE work is like Web 1.0 web-dev or 'shopify store' dev then I would consider Launch School.
If you feel like your FE work was real work (which it sounds like it is) then I would consider an interview/career-accelerator like Coachable.
If Coachable is an option, Formation is an option too and I can explain more about it. Interview Kickstart is the third option. Pathrise used to be an option but it closed down.
All three are different.
If you want to stick to Frontend then I would consider Formation only if you want to do FAANG-Fronte…
A few reasons:
\- For flag 7 - when it comes to exaggerating your experience, you'll commonly see things along the lines of. like a hotel marketing manager who ran their website -> "Web Developer". Mechanical Engineer -> "Systems Engineer". Accountant -> "Data Engineer". Account manager -> "Project Manager"
For grads at places like Codesmith the vast majority reframe their non-technical experience as experience and it's a key part of the high outcomes in the past and if you can lie like this, you won't be getting those mid level jobs with zero experience that they love to advertise without telling you how it happens.
If the job was at a big company and some kind of information-related job, this is a lot easier to do without completely flat out lying.
\- If you don't want to lie to that degree and hope for the best, then more generally - there are more transferrable skills in "desk j…
u/michaelnovatireplied·DELETED · archived copy★ FEATURED
Oh ok yeah for sure, people can also get temporary jobs too, I'm just seeing right now people who don't go all in on SWE for the entire job search time having a harder time - it's such a difficult job search that people are just going back to their old jobs.
Talking Codesmith again since I know them so well, they had a huge spike in placements that 'ghosted' and their placement was verified by their LinkedIn instead of officially.
This is a sign of people giving up and going back to their old job or a tangential old job and giving up and not reporting it back as a placement because it's not a full blown SWE job.
Let's look at Codesmith for example. The schedule for part time is:
9 Months:
Monday – Thursday: 8:00 pm–11:00 pm ET
Saturday 12:00 pm–6:00 pm ET
So if you work full time you have hardly any time for anything else. You can Sundays and Friday nights off I guess?
Let's say you have two young children and normally leave at 7:30am to drop the kids off at preschool and then go to work. And then pick them up and come home at 6pm and then cook dinner and then go to class and spend otherwise ZERO time with your family.
Like you need a support system. A partner who can help out significantly to support you.
It's really not at all easy.
I've heard it both ways. People who have savings and a support system think part time can work, others thing it only works if you are single and unattached.
Either-way, the longer and slower you do it part time, the longer it will take you to eventually…
u/michaelnovatireplied·DELETED · archived copy★ FEATURED
Hopeless but not impossible yeah.
So look at Codesmith's stats since we're talking about them and they release numbers.
2021 grads: about 90% of grads placed within 6 months
2022 grads: about 80% of grads placed within 6 months
2023 grads: about 40% of grads placed within 6 months (and very notable that there was a huge double digit percentage increase in people who ghosted Codesmith and got counted as a placement because of LinkedIn
2024 grads: no data yet, but based on Codesmith's little bits of data there have been about 250 offers in h2 2024 -> h1 2025, which covers some 2022 grads, 2023 grads, 2024 grads, and then 2024 grads.
Now enrollment has declined because they cutback from 4+1 to 1+1 cohorts in Feb 2024 so it's hard to tell what the placement rates are but they definitely aren't good.
Codesmith also should have plenty of information about 2024 grads now that i's 6 mon…
u/michaelnovatireplied·DELETED · archived copy★ FEATURED
I agree with this point as of June 2025.
We (speaking for Formation now) use a ton of AI for helping people practice and off the shelf ChatGPT is not perfect for learning right now. We have a lot of unique product applications of AI specifically tuned for helping people have effective practice and feedback and fortunately there's enough judgement and taste and nuance in that that it justifies our existing right now haha.
Do Codecademy, consider Launch School Core, and drop Codesmith and get your money back unless your goal is to go through the $22,500 version with dwindling hope of actually getting a job according to their own data.
The primary goal of it is to get you to show up to more Codesmith sessions so that they can indoctrinate you and get you to join the expensive one.
Their former CEO said in a podcast that these sessions were their marketing funnel and that they didn't run ads at the time (now they inundate you with ads as well).
Not a bad idea to put advertising dollars into courses that offer some value! But they are ads for Codesmith that you are paying for.
That's a fair point so I won't attribute you to claiming you are an industry expert and world class industry, but I will attribute Codesmith to saying it about you.
If you don't think it's true and you are employed by Codesmith than you have a responsibility to tell them because they might be false advertising and they should correct it.
My point about the quality. Formation has 200 or something mentors in the system and some are industry legends.
If you think the program's value is collaboration with those people then come on down to Formation because you'll collaborate with a huge range of people, far larger than in that program.
I posted above, but I was infuriated by your Dog's account and I was very mean about the AI program and I'm going to be more cool headed about it because it's not terrible, I'm just critiquing it like I would critique my own work and I want my comments to…
1. Agree the core team/admin team and the instructor team is hardworking, no question there. But Codesmith's codebase is apparently a giant mess that looks like the largest OSP project - which isn't surprising because the people that work on it just graduated Codesmith. I would say the team has tremendous POTENTIAL but the technical people lack the experience to be called talented. Based on some alumni talk that someone told me about where Will tried to explain the Codesmith architecture (in an attempt to learn it himself) and it literally sounded like the worst code I've ever heard of for a 10 year old company that calls itself a tech company, something like deploying the entire codebase to 32 microservices that each ran one of them???
I know this sounds mean but it's just being real. Like every instructor I know that sees Codesmith defend the quality of the code or the legitimacy of…
I still think we're talking about different things here.
I'm not attacking YOUR background. I'm attacking it being marketed as "world class instructions" and "industry experts"
And calling yourself an "industry expert" with 3 years of experience and minimal professional AI experience is what I'm calling the peak Dunning Kruger by definition.
If you don't think you are a world class instructor and industry expert, ask Codesmith to stop marketing you that way.
u/michaelnovatireplied·DELETED · archived copy★ FEATURED
The leaders that have left are the ones that stopped believing or were laid off. I wouldn't be surprised if Annie also left and moved on.
I spoke to Alina and she's a much more reasonable person and open to criticism, but she's in a very tough place with Codesmith imploding and trying to pivot to AI - which many programs have struggled with.
Alina: if Will, Annie and Eric all left the company I would definitely be open to talking, but with them there there is too much baggage of low standards and lack of diligence.
That's not what I said, I said it would be wasted money because we can't think of a "report" that would be useful.
So we spend even MORE MONEY person by person going over these things.
I think that is better but if you don't then you can call it a scam and not join, thats totally fine if that's your opinion.
We are very diligent about feedback and actioning it and people wanting data is on the list, and the way we are working on that and have worked on it is by providing them more data.
We have a bunch more data but it's only for people who apply and we get more info about you to provide you with more relevant data.
That's how it should be - deliver the best product, not superficial garbage CIRR reports so that we APPEAR legit. We actually BEHAVE legitimately with integrity the best we can and over time that compounds into trust.
If you behave sketchy and focus on superficial you e…
I'll try to summarize haha:
1. I used to be on them like anything else, pros and cons, and I recommended people go there with Rithm and Launch School.
I was very consistently hard on three things:
\- marketing mid level and senior placements for people with zero experience (which I felt was wrong)
\- marketing their OSP projects as 'equivalent of months of full time SWE work' when they were full of junior problems and most people worked on them for 3-4 weeks
\- their instructors all went to codesmith itself and were promoted up the tree in a pyramid shape so they don't have SWE experience
2. Codesmith didn't see things the same way and framed me as a villain - which I completely ignored and kept doing my thing as a public service to offer my opinions through my lens
3. Throughout that time, former staff, current staff, students, etc... have proactively contacted me and told me ab…
It's the exception, not because it doesn't have troubles from the market too but because they are marketing themselves as the "slow path" to becoming a Software Engineer.
More people will try and few will succeed but they won't be mislead or burned with it.
Now because of this philosophy it hyper optimizes for people making it through Capstone that are actually good fits and they actually get jobs, but it's relatively small compared to typical bootcamps.
But the fact that they have a 70% six month placement rate (accounting for every student, down from 100%) that is quite high when somewhere like Codesmith has a 40% six month placement rate (when including ghosters based on LinkedIn) shows why this slow and stead approach works.
Financially though it works because Launch School is small and founder run. Their founder teaches and helps people.
Codesmith has a bunch of directors and m…
We don't have zoomed out data as I've stated a number of times over the years extensively why.
We don't have a way to aggregate date into a consistent "report" that makes any sense and we won't want to spend time making a superficial one that we don't think is useful.
When you apply we show you anonymized before after data based on your background.
We don't have end dates, graduations, or "school" concepts and it's very hard to make some kind of report.
We explain our process in multiple paragraphs on our website.
It's INSANELY more costly for us to discuss outcomes 1-1 with each person that applies and is interested but we think it's the best way to make sure someone is on the same page and we will keep doing that for the Fellowship.
I wish we could have a report that was as effective and clear because it would save time and money.
It's not perfect but that's the transparent answ…
1. Last week you or your bot said that you asked your manager if it was a conflict and that they worked at Microsoft for 25 years and said there wasn't. So if you since then went through the entire internal conflict review process and are confirming that then I will acknowledge that. I've been around the block here and any super senior engineer will warn you on this topic. Some companies don't even let you mentor at bootcamps and consider it a conflict. Instead of seeing this as an attack, see it as advice. I've seen many people get in trouble for conflicts.
2. You said in a public talk about two months ago with Course Report that you weren't using AI on the job and wanted to more and would consider new roles that use AI more internally at Microsoft or at another company. If you are updating this and now saying since then you have extensively used AI the whole time then I will update ac…
That's why integrity is so important.
I have an email chain with Codesmith leaders about literally the math having problems on their California reports on their website and they never responded or acknowledged those concerns and answered other things.
Like if you publish things that were made up for marketing purposes, rushed in a panic because you realized how terrible the numbers were and did a massive LinkedIn profile sprint not so diligently that's fine but don't tell the public that.
If you keep telling everyone your data is audited but you and CIRR don't answer me about where the audited version is (historically CIRR publishes the audit paperwork after they are audited) it's sloppiness.
People make mistakes here and there but almost everything here is a mistake and when I talk to former employees that proactively tell me how clowntown everything is run there... everyone "in ove…
Each week is completely dynamic and unique both to you and week to week.
Every Friday we run the algorithms and crunch a schedule of mentor led, peer based sessions for the next week and then assign them all out in the evening.
What you get depends on:
\- your workload that week
\- your schedule that week
\- your availability that week
\- your job interviews that week if you have any
\- everyone else's availability who need to work on similar problems as you
\- the mentors availability and FAANG-canonical level matching criteria to you and your group.
Then throughout the week you can book 1-1 mocks when eligible, book checks etc.. also join and release sessions.
Then in between you do practice problems, system design practice, benchmarks, etc... on various topics. The topics you work on depends on your progress, your workload etc...
We have some interesting "tasks" like to cha…
Yeah sure for starting in 2025: rough non-binding, reasonable estimates:
About \~250 people starting in 2025 so far, about 15% or so leave in the trial week.
We had fairly robust starts in January, then tariff threats in particular caused a lot hesitation, and then May -> June things picked back up again.
I would estimate about 5 to 10 people start in a given week?
The number of people in Formation isn't super relevant because the nature of the program scales up and down dynamically - including all of the mentorship.
So this sounds insane but your session matching is BETTER the MORE people there are.
Our team works on the practice content, benchmarks, etc... but the mentors themselves are contractors and we have a very complex algorithms to manage all of this dynamically without much humans.
So more people, better level matching, better time matching, etc...
All of our full tim…
To be contrarian, I think they - specifically Will - should get credit for doing one thing well, which is building an organic community through sheer will (no pun intended). I think they figured out how to take high potential people with low self-confidence/low confidence in their SWE abilities and increase their self-confidence (which is not an easy feat).
But everything else about the company I'm extremely critical on and have been puzzled for years why the heck they wouldn't take my feedback.
For years, defending, defending, defending. Even Alina when she joined posted something about how how I'm 'reddit competitor' going after them - trivializing my feedback and mischaracterizing it.
If they friggin listened to the friggin feedback they would have had a better shot andit's too late now because they have zero engineering talent (they might have potential, but no serious talent) an…
Yes that's also correct. For 2024 placements, early career = harder, Compensation increase = higher.
Our demographic has been shifting and in 2025, only 3 placements have under 1 year SWE experience.
I believe we're going to do an H1 update as H1 finishes up and we'll be able to comment on the latest.
Read the fine print for the official full details but as a partial note, these calculations we are using YOE prior to starting Formation, full time SWE work experience only, excluding internships, contracts, and adjacent experience.
So someone with 1 year as a SWE might have been a contractor for 2-3 years and if they weren't a W2 type situation and were "contracting" that doesn't count in these calculations.
It's like the opposite of embellishing resumes and really holding a firm tight bar on the definition of experience.
If you don't have 1-2+ years of this kind of SWE experience,…
Do you mind giving her the documented evidence of Codesmith confirming they paid a guy on Upwork to post stuff on Reddit and then that same person posted shit about me and tried to get me banned?
Do you want the messages Codesmith posted to their CSX community of 20K people lying to them that I was on Slack with multiple aliases contacting people to try to get them to go to Formation - which never happened.
Those messages are libelous and I asked Codesmith to apologize which they declined to.
I'm furious at Codesmith and I'm justified in being angry and upset about it and I'm playing by the rules of the game in expressing my anger.
That stat is correct and it's about 45% so far in 2025 so close but a bit lower.
The average YOE for 2025 placements so far is (full time SWE experienceprior to Formation): **5.5 YEARS**
This means that people had bootcamps, self taught, and other degrees, worked for 5 years, came to Formation, and then got a better job.
What is wrong with that?
Here are the 10 or so most placement companies : Udacity, Amazon, Gurus Solutions, Meta, Meta, Meta, Headspace, Stripe, AppleCart, PayPal, Applied Intuition, Meta, NVIDIA
These are stronger placements than 2024.
What is wrong with that?
**I'm happy to take feedback to improve our marketing so please give it but I want to make sure it's clear that the stuff on our website is accurate for starters.**
Will is faking his background yes - he has never really been an engineer ever - and then he spent 10 years focused on superficial appearances…
I have no problem with your background or your efforts. I have a problem that you and Codesmith aren't marketing it for what it is and I think it's doomed to fail from a business point of view.
You just said you are working on AI stuff at Microsoft and your work at Codesmith is a conflict of interest - like seriously submit the internal conflict clearance ticket and get sign off before you get fired for it. Microsoft doesn't screw around with this stuff.
Second, it's all defensive. I'm not attacking your background, I'm attacking the marketing and pricing you are using based on your background.
You can't change your background, there is absolutely zero you can say because you don't have the experience, there isn't some program you did or some credential or some project. Zero.
If you want to be defensive, then defend the pricing and defend the marketing.
Maybe my pricing is off and t…
A) I meant that Founders can sell off stock in secondaries, instead I bought more with cash
B) The platform is genuinely a unique product not offered anywhere else in the world. That doesn't mean it's GOOD haha, it has a lot of bugs and product issues, etc... and it's why I have to do some work still ;), but it's indeed a unique model that lets us adapt faster to things and it's an advantage in many ways.
AI for productivity is about using AI tools, so you need a background in using AI tools. I can do that one.
I don't have a background in ML or LLMs and I can't do anything personally about ML.
Unlike Will Sentance who thinks he can so much that he did a public Frotnend Master's Course on it, I don't want to bullshit the public with smoke and mirrors. I know what I can do and what I can't do.
The challenge for us with AI for productivity isn't the content, but it's that our 7 years…
A) correct, I have equity as an owner and Formation is venture backed. I have not made a single penny from my equity and I have purchased additional equity, but I do own equity.
B) Excellent question. we spent 7 years building a PLATFORM that is completely unique and patended and built from the ground up to enables us to to configure practice and benchmarking dynamically.
This technology has has a number of people contribute to it over the years and will support the AI and ML people contributing to it as well.
My personal expertise lies in AI PRODUCTIVITY - using AI to replace a number of engineers and using it to make me 5X more productive through 20,000 commits and counting.
So I'm not out of the game by any means but I don't have any ML experience - our first product in this space is focused on productivity using AI tools, which honestly doesn't overlap much with Codesmith's AI pr…
u/michaelnovatireplied·DELETED · archived copy★ FEATURED
I haven't made a penny of salary for the past 8 years and i'm not selling anything. I'm pointing out how poorly positioned Codesmith's AI program is and how they need to seriously watch out for growing it through milking alumni - who are paying for something that they were promised for free for life.
I've spoken to a number of companies on the B2B side floated different ideas around. The answer - we want our fleet of 100 ML engineers to teach this internally.
Codesmith's AI program is maintained and lead by someone with I think about 2-3 years of industry experience, ZERO prior to Codesmith, has not done AI professionally.
AND IS DOING IT PART TIME WHILE HE WORKS AT MICROSOFT.
There's no way in heck this program can be good. No way.
I'm telling you I will work 16 hours a day to build a much better AI program applying my experience as the number one code committer at Meta and showing…
I hear this about 1-2 times a week. It's frustrating to people as well how delusional their leaders are.
I spoke to Alina directly 1-1 on a call and she seems 50% like a good product leader who tricked into taking this job and is now running a company full of mouse traps, and 50% she was brainwashed by Will as well and perpetuates this bull shit messaging and narratives.
Unfortunately she's not an engineer and while she has more experience than Will did, she still doesn't have the engineering lens to look at things through and her ambition and drive is pushing Codesmith in the wrong direction.
I don't think there's a single thing they can do to save it without throwing Will's goal of an "independent bootcamp" and the rest of their community support into the trash and raising VC funding to build something new OR by getting rid of all of the staff and rebuilding something from the groun…
I think Codesmith's founder wants the Chief AI Officer so that he can go to conferences and throw around the title.
Codesmith is all about appearances, superficial, good words... and zero substance to back it up.
I'm sorry that's offensive to the people who are trying hard to save it, but it's true.
I had the same reaction to Chief AI Officer and called it out. They are pushing this narrative of the "modern engineer" - someone who brings their past experience to SWE and AI and is a unique perspective that makes the industry better.
I agree with the idea but the blocker is that this applies to people with EXTENSIVE SWE WORK EXPERIENCE and not to bootcamp grads with no experience.
They keep trying to push this narrative and come up with random alumni examples and twist them to fit the mould.
Codesmith: you can't force product market fit by just telling stories about how your product meets the market. It might make you feel good because the stories are great, but If it's not there it's not there and you guys are done - hang up the towel and if you want to keep doing this, start over from scratch.
It is indeed, I'm telling it loud and clear everywhere and my LinkedIn post about it got a lot of traction.
Codesmith doesn't like me much and every time I call them out they double down more on this narrative because (from my conversations with them) they are incapable of seeing why this is disingenuous.
Based on their tanking enrollment, people aren't buying it anymore so if they want to keep doing this they keep going they are accelerating their demise.
Sorry to hear that and this isn't that uncommon so you aren't alone. I see a lot of bootcamp grads with a "I will do anything to break into the industry" attitude and the hustle carries them for a a year, two, sometimes a bit longer, but the fundamental gaps eventually come out and it impacts people pretty hard.
I wish bootcamps talked about this more openly. I'm super pissed off at Codesmith for advertising a success case last week 'from Codesmith to $150,000 job' and left out the person graduated in 2018, worked somewhere for 2.5 years, and THEN got the $150K job in 2021.
The journey just STARTS with the first job, but for the bootcamp itself it's the END and they advertise it that way and even places like Codesmith that offer "lifetime support" don't actually offer that and it's a marketing label.
Don't want to play the victim here and I have real advice haha:
1. Do a master's de…
Alina is more capable of running the company for sure but it's too little too late honestly.
She needs a capable team around her and almost everyone has left.
The whole industry is changing and the teaching style and pedagogy at Codesmith is dying out and you don't have a team left to invest in building out.AI ways to learn. You have to flip your company on its head. But you don't have the money and you don't have the talent to build that.
Even if Alina has a vision, the team is delivering garbage code (as her and I both know the quality of) and people there isn't even realize it. They celebrate the heroes of the past - who themselves really didn't know what they were doing either.
Will needs to leave the company entirely, which it sounds like might be over time and he floats to academia - where maybe he should be - because he just doesn't have the experience to forge software engine…
The questions I normally ask that specific Codesmith grads have lied about and their story fell apart:
1. What other roles did you work with (e.g. PM, design, operations, support, legal, HR, marketing, PR, release engineering) and give some examples of those
2. What was the engineer - PM ratio
3. How does the company make money and what's the business model
4. What were things that worked well and didn't work well with your manager?
On a resume:
1. if you see the word OSLabs or OpenSource Labs listed anywhere, immediate sign. We had to train our team on this because Codesmith grads were being flagged in the wrong bucket for Formation based on their resumes as team members who were not trained did not know the difference between a job and project and the amount of time specified was 1+ year.
This is normally right beside a section called "Open Source Projects" so it appears more le…
1. I have a reference letter signed by Phil Troutman from a few years ago
2. I have numerous confidential chats of people telling me that Codesmith is aware of this and that everyone is aware.
3. The OSLabs directors was basically laid off a year ago but kept on the website and told to keep her email address for appearances but said that Codesmith runs the show and manages everything. They continue to puppet a fake company to do fake reference checks.
4. I know of two cases where people were asked for W2s or proof of work and both those people exaggerate the OSP experience on their resumes and both ended up getting hired without specifying how it happened. And I believe Codesmith acknowledged and helped one of those.
Conspiring to commit fraud is a jail-able crime by the way.
Puppeting a fake charity (that has no revenue reported at the IRS and is run by Annie's team at Codesmith - a t…
u/michaelnovatireplied·DELETED · archived copy★ FEATURED
I didn't say anything about you. I was responding to that person about the typical grad behavior for why many Codesmith grads defend this behavior.
I had a rant that I deleted because it was not coherent. But time will tell and the truth is catching up with them.
Most people have already figured it out and apparently many remaining staff are one foot out the door.
Maybe the CEO steps down and Alina takes over and maybe brings in some funding to buy out the company for cheap and they try to build something new and sell it off for a profit later on in a consolidation of remaining bootcamp brands?
Kind of like what happened at App Academy. The founder finally left, the new CEO replaced everything with he own AI platform. They stopped doing SWE and kind of floating around as a completely different version of the program before.
Codesmith will probably follow that path and they really sh…
u/michaelnovatireplied·DELETED · archived copy★ FEATURED
A good question is to ask why I'm like this.
Seek first to understand, then be understood is what Codesmith told their staff, and they should action it.
I offered to help Codesmith and some ideas to work with them. Their leaders didn't want to.
Alina confirmed to me that Codesmith paid some guy to post on Reddit and I gave her evidence that the same guy lied and tried to get me banned and that the mysterious missing founder of the Codesmith subreddit was involved with this scheme.
I offered to apologize publicly for any individual person who felt attacked by my commentary if they publicly apologizing for making shit up about me and sending it out to their community.
They declined to apologize.
Then I open up LinkedIn and see all kinds of fake made up stories that seem to rewrite history and promote Codesmith.
I hear about more and more layoffs even as of a month ago.
I hear about…
u/michaelnovatireplied·DELETED · archived copy★ FEATURED
A number of alumni are brainwashed and don't even realize they are lying. And then they get upset or defensive when you call them out because Codesmith "changed their life".
A number of these people come around eventually and it's one of the reasons there is zero Codesmith activity anymore on here.
After people get out of the bubble they see the truth and they don't go back and Codesmith alumni network is also dying.
u/michaelnovatireplied·DELETED · archived copy★ FEATURED
I commented on a similar comment but the person deleted their comment so here is my thoughts:
Yeah they do and I do not agree with it and would debate him on it BUT he is transparent about it, and quite blunt.
He says stuff up to fake it and that you will be exposed like 9 out of 10 times and it just has to work once.
I really don't agree but I respect that he's clear on it.
Codesmith has a giant facade that pretends to teach people and brainwashes them to think that it was Codesmith that did it. Look the other way and blame students for doing it.
If Codesmith told people hey the job market is not fair so you have to exaggerate your experience to get through. You deserve the job and you pass the interviews so this is a means to end.
My answer is it doesn't matter that much as long as you realize your ROI is much higher than the cost.
I don't know the website data off the top of my head but for 2025 (unofficially quick math on our live tracking database) $125K average increase and median is $123K increase.
This is running match on the increase (or decrease) per person and then average OR median of those numbers.
Our live data is missing people who haven't been processed yet, we have ballpark 5 Amazon placements in the past two weeks and 5 Meta placements in the past month and that's not in there - usually those are higher.
We do better than that. If you apply we'll walk you through a selection of anonymized before and after outcomes for people with similar backgrounds to yourself in a table.
The high level numbers we post are to justify the cost. The ROI is insane so you should look into it more and see if it's a good fit. And then we go super deep.
It's very hard to anonymize the data and it's only a selected illustrative set of examples but it's pretty good IMO.
Since we've rolled that out it's significantly helped people understand possible scenarios based on the YOE, location, and target company type.
u/michaelnovatireplied·DELETED · archived copy★ FEATURED
Yeah they do and I do not agree with it and would debate him on it BUT he is transparent about it, and quite blunt.
He says stuff up to fake it and that you will be exposed like 9 out of 10 times and it just has to work once.
I really don't agree but I respect that he's clear on it.
Codesmith has a giant facade that pretends to teach people and brainwashes them to think that it was Codesmith that did it. Look the other way and blame students for doing it.
If Codesmith told people hey the job market is not fair so you have to exaggerate your experience to get through. You deserve the job and you pass the interviews so this is a means to end.
👍 I edit my posts because I go so fast I often have spelling and grammar issues, this is one of them. Will edit.
Incompetence isn't the right word though, it's lack of diligence and rigor, holding a really low bar for your work. Having mathematical errors and telling everyone how great it is. And then constantly defending with 'it was just a mistake, it was just a mistake'. If it's a couple times sure, but if everything you do has mistakes, maybe YOU are the problem.
The amount of careless mistakes on Codesmith website, in their data, in their materials, in their research, in their curriculum and slides, in their HR practices, in their company structure and registration (don't even get me started there), everything can't be a mistake.
It's not incompetence perhaps, and it's just carelessness or negligence maybe?
Yes good point. I'm enraged right now and very upset at them.
They just posted on LinkedIn about how a grad went to Codesmith and got a $150K job at Twilio right away.... the grad went to Codesmith in 2018, got a job at Virgin and then Twilio in 2021....
They have a Dog Bot responding to me on Reddit now that is an incompentant use of AI or an idiot pretending to be AI.
But I'm losing it and sorry if I'm unprofessional about it now. I am a transparent and authentic person.
Agreed, it's equally the hiring company's fault.
The moral point I have is that Codesmith advertises it's methods and pedagoy and Will is like a GOD TO STAFF MEMBERS.
But all of that is bullshit. He's a phony who can't code.
If Codesmith was honest about how people get jobs I wouldn't criticize them.
If someone who is smart and autodidactic just knew they could self study and put their personal project as 1.5 years of work experience thye wouldn't have to pay $22,500 for Codesmith to tell that to them.
So Codesmith keeps up this facade like the Wizard of Oz with Will Sentance manipulating everyone around him when behind the curtain, things are not as they appear.
I'm saying that people at Codesmith are aware of people lying and support them in various ways (I'm being vague) to help the person.
There are a LOT of people at Codesmith who are not W2 full time employees. So let's say a friendly prep instructor or a Fellow or Mentor does it. "It wasn't us it was our contractors!" isn't going to hold up.
It's more complicated than it seems yeah but based on the messages I've gotten so far, I'm going to hold my tongue, but Codesmith is on notice and maybe this behavior has finally caught up with them.
I believe I agreed with that in my post.
My the 'things' people told me about involve Codesmith cooperating in some fashion and they are clearly aware of it.
I totally get that if a student is like "help, I put OSP as work experience and they want to verify the background check, what do I do!?!?!" that if Codesmith staff tell the person "too bad, you're toast!" that would be bad. But from my understanding, this has happened enough times that Codesmith is aware of it.
I surfaced this to a leader in a 1-1 call and the leader said they would look into it because this person was shocked and puzzled that it was happening.
Well it's still happening!